A Unilateral Declaration of Statehood will be CostlyPondering Palestinian Statehood

[This article was written in the context of Yasir Arafat insisting he would declare a Palestinian state on May 4, 1999, five years after a key agreement had been signed. For more background, see an article in the Economist, "Arafat's tricky descent from his UDI deadline." In the end, Arafat did not carry through with a declaration of statehood.

A Palestinian state is a foregone conclusion in a formal sense but not in its essentials. Yasir Arafat will immediately declare a state on May 4th and it will be recognized by an overwhelming number of governments around the world. But a Palestinian state differs from the Palestinian Authority only if it controls foreign and defense policies. In this sense, the Palestinian state will be formalistic, not real. Until and unless Israel accepts it, the Palestinian state will remain a shell.

When a state is declared, the results will be severely adverse for Palestinians and Israelis alike. This flagrant breach of the Oslo accords will cause economic relations to diminish further and violence to increase. The proclamation of a state will likely exacerbate the great schisms of Israeli politics, left-right and secular-religious, leading to an even more erratic Israeli policy on this issue.

The United States and Israel are more important in this case, as in so many others, than the other 180 nations. I hope they will not just refuse to recognize the Palestinian state by make it very clear to Arafat and the Palestinian Authority that a unilateral declaration will be costly to the Palestinians. Continued negotiations are the sensible alternative to a unilateral declaration of independence. The issues are difficult and the process protracted; there can be no arbitrary date for the conclusion of negotiations, for this merely invites Palestinian procrastination. For negotiations to succeed, the process must go on until its natural conclusion.

Related Topics:Arab-Israel conflict & diplomacy, Palestinians | Daniel Pipesreceive the latest by email: subscribe to the free mef mailing listThis text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete and accurate information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.